Interview With An Evil Child (AND WHERE SHE IS TODAY!)

Interview With An Evil Child (AND WHERE SHE IS TODAY!)

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20,551,231 views  Oct 26, 2021  #Documentary #Psychology #StrangerStories

The case of Beth Thomas is definitely a disturbing one. A child full of rage, born out of hatred and despair.

This JCS inspired documentary will uncover the case of Beth Thomas. Watch until the end of the video to see where and how Beth is doing today.

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Transcript

are people afraid of you beth beth thomas was just six years old when

her deep blue eyes shocked american society after this documentary about her life was broadcasted on television

undaunted and bored beth recounted how she tried to murder her younger brother when she was going to kill her parents

and why she had stolen knives from the family kitchen despite her short life she had suffered

brutal abuse from her biological father the girl had been diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder rad a

condition in which young children failed to establish healthy bonds with their parents or caregivers due to extreme

abuse her signs of psychopathy had been developed as a form of self-defense against the outside world beth thomas

was adopted at 19 months old along with their 7th month old brother jonathan by tim and julie a conservative american

couple who had been married for 12 years but were unable to have children of their own although tim mentioned not needing

children to make their lives complete they decided to venture into adoption as a means of sharing and transmitting the

completeness julie seemed more excited about the idea of adoption and mentioned that it was a

dream shared by both finally in 1984 they were notified of the availability of adoption of beth and

jonathan they were surprised by the speed of the process and they were told that they were normal and healthy as if they were

children without a past like two blank books later they obtained information

regarding the living conditions that both children had before their adoption and discovered that the children lived

in a despicable environment both showed signs of having been mistreated and abandoned and their food

and hygiene conditions were precarious beth showed signs of having been sexually abused by her father and could

spend a whole day alone with a box of cereal to eat jonathan lived reclining in a crib

surrounded by urine and dirty diapers and his head was misshapen from having spent so much time in the same pose

while his back was completely flat his forehead had bumps the boy was seven months old and the

lack of stimulation had affected his abilities he could not raise his head or turn around

after a short time they noticed that beth began to show aggressive and sexual behaviors that were gradually increasing

mainly directed towards her brother but also towards her adoptive parents and domestic animals through hitting kicking

the use of pins to prick them pinching her brother's genitals self-injurious genital masturbation in public places

and confessions about wanting to kill jonathan tim and julie when they were overwhelmed by the

situation they decided to take beth to dr ken maggot a clinical psychologist specializing in abused children who

conducted this interview with beth presented in the video when she was six and a half years old

who's afraid of you ben john

your brother and what is your brother why is your brother afraid of you because i hurt him so much

okay and what

at night time what do your parents do to your door get shot why do they lock it shut

because they don't want me to hurt john right and they're kind of afraid

of of hurting john are you hurting john okay

are they afraid that you might hurt them yep

during the session with the therapist beth was distant and jaded she seemed destined to be a murderer and

lacking any ounce of empathy would you bet

when would you do it right okay why would you do night time

because i don't like don't say i make a way but they can kill me

and what would you do to him beth

okay what would you start with a knife dearest pins and people

who my brother okay do you do it a little bit or

a lot a lot okay and what are you trying to do to your

brother why do you want your brother to die

because i was hurt so bad and i don't want to be around people

okay who else would you like to stick pins into

mommy and daddy what would you like to have happen to them

[Music] jesus could have lived to save israel

yet chose to die to save the world tim is the minister of a small methodist church in the south

he and his wife julie have been married for 12 years unable to have children of their own

they decided to adopt in february of 1984 they received a call from the department of social services

telling them they had two children available for adoption they were told that beth 19 months old

and her brother jonathan seven months old were normal and healthy we did not need children to make our

lives complete we felt secure in ourselves and securing our relationship

but we wanted to share that with somebody else and we felt like we had a lot to pass on to a child and that was

what we really wanted to do and when the phone call came it was like at last it's here

it seemed like a miracle it happened so quick we'd heard of couples having to wait

five ten years on a child and here we had two young children

um it was like the answer to our dream their dream became a nightmare when they

realized that beth and jonathan had severe emotional problems

beth and her brother eric were children of a dysfunctional family his father was an alcoholic and his

mother neglected early child rearing also passing away a year and a half after eric's birth

they had an older sister but she was hardly home since she worked in a strip club her father sexually abused beth from

birth to three years at which point social services took care of the children we had the kids with us

beth and her younger brother john for uh probably a couple of months until we begin to learn something about their

background and their past and when we learned it some things seem to fall in place about

her behavior and john's behavior from several sources we discovered that

that they didn't have enough food to eat that perhaps even

beth went all day maybe with just a box of kick cereal john himself

was found in a bassinet with little patches of urine all over it and

a dirty diaper and a couple of bottles at his feet that had curdled milk and

the back of his head was completely flat the front of his head had bulged out and

at the seven months he couldn't raise his head couldn't roll over he was

just had no stimulation and we think perhaps that happened to beth

and it wasn't very long until she began showing some signs of perhaps

even some abuse there was a nightmare that she had

and the nightmare was about a man who was falling on her

and hurting her with a part of himself tell me about your birth father what was

that nightmare like when he touched not the tennis

okay and talk lad hearted a lot until it lagged

and um wouldn't be me a lot

he'd hit on me wouldn't be very nice to me how old were

you one and

in your nightmare what happens i get real scared where are you in the nightmare what

happens in the dream i'm in the house upstairs

and then what happens then when he comes upstairs and um

how do you feel when you talk about this scared

where's your birth where's your birth father what's he doing he's right there and there's his hand

his hands right there where right there you can't hardly see it

because it's green what's it touching my vagina and what is your birth father doing

hot nut your face looks uh sad can you tell me about that

[Music] that's crying because there's thoughts of the tears

when referring to the nightmares in which a man fell on her and hurt her beth implies that she was sexually

assaulted by her father the repercussions of the abuse she had suffered as a child had led to

uncontrollable anger [Music] beth had endured severe neglect and

abuse as a child her birth mother died when she was one because of these early childhood

experiences beth never developed a sense of conscience love or trust for anyone

the early sexual abuse by her birth father would cause her to exhibit inappropriate sexual behavior especially

toward her brother does your brother have private parts

um yeah yeah what are what is his private

parts penis and butts and what do you do with your brother

with his private parts ben i heard it tell me about it what do you do

well a pinch it um

squeeze it kick it

when you do things to your brother's private parts what does he say stop

okay tell me that well he says stop but i don't stop

do you hurt him a lot

okay and would you like to do that to other boys

when i caught her with jonathan one morning she was molesting him

he was crying and his pants were down and i said beth what's happening and she said i pulled his penis and

put my finger up his anus and i said didn't he say to stop and she

said yeah i did and i said did you and she said no

beth and her brother jonathan had lived alongside their biological father in a state of total abandonment

also as a result of her pain beth sexually harassed her brother have you ever rubbed your private parts

do you do it a lot a lot how much do you do that

not every single day and let's see i did it every single day until it got

well bad and messed up and i had to go to the doctor and i did not like it

what what do you mean by real bad well it looked real raw

got all kinds of boobies on it charms a lot of stuff from my hand and it bled

she started to masturbate at inappropriate times um

i remember one typically when we were at the hospital waiting for tim to come out he was there visiting

and beth and john were in the back seat and i turned around and she had her legs spread and was masturbating in a

public parking lot and i had tried to explain to her numerous times before that that that's

private area you don't do it in public places and

gone over that with her and and it never seemed to face her and um julie how often would your

daughter masturbate daily constantly do you have animals beth

four of them can you tell me their names cloudy shooky

darcy and annie and daddy said um a day ago

that um there was a stray cat he did not have a home so daddy is was taking care

of it and took it to the vet when he started there when he had a flight to go

and what do you do to the animals beth they come with pants

do you stick them a little bit or a lot a lot what are you trying to do the animals path kill them

what do they do when you stick them with the pins

well annie cries she's a dog

she got baby birds down out of the nest and we thought maybe she was just curious so we explained that she could hurt them

um put them back and went through a hole sitting down and

talking to her about the problem of it and the next day we went out to check

the baby birds and they were on the ground dead with her their necks broken

let's talk about what happened once when you were smaller when you when you found some baby birds in a tree what what did

you do then i took them out and what did mom say to you

um that the mother will not come back if somebody touches her babies

are the baby birds kind of small can you describe them for me

well they don't have their eyes open but they can hear hear me

and they look up are they kind of helpless

little baby birds can they fly well

can they run away

yes they can are they easy to catch or hard to catch

yeah well it's hard to remember with the baby birds what did you do

took them out of the food and what did you do with them

right around too rough also when at the end i picked it up and

i thought it was better and i came to say mommy is this bird dead and she said

um she called daddy and said

tim and um

and then he came and um i think i'll remember that they said yes

and so so the little baby birds die

i don't know you don't remember i just remember

that i think i remember what mommy and daddy saying the last bird boy got was dead

do you know what mom said to me she said that all of them were dead did you squeeze him did baby best

squeeze him you're doing a good job honey go ahead and tell me what happened

i squished them and what happened i died

beth also wanted to kill her parents with a knife and although she had never killed a human being she tortured family

pets and even killed birds the way she says it means she is oblivious of the pain she inflicts on

others but this kind of aggression and our animals and even

our brother jonathan was beginning to to grow to such an excess that our life

was miserable at home we had john would cry uh in the mornings and say his stomach

hurt we for the longest time we thought maybe this child has

uh has some problem with his intestinal area or maybe has allergies and so we're trying

to get all that checked out come to find out beth was coming out of her room and hitting him in the stomach

and so as a last resort just to protect him we had to tie our door shut so i

guess for what the last three or four months now we've had to tie her in at night

sort of barricade her other times the girl waited until her

parents did not see her to hit her younger brother hard in the stomach in addition she was sticking pins into

him the situation was unmanageable for the parents who could not control the girl

to protect the brother they placed the latch on beth's room and locked her in at night to prevent her from continuing

to do harm the repercussions of beth's tragic childhood led to uncontrollable rage

despite the love and nurturing of her adoptive parents she took this rage out on herself

on her brother and on them her acts of violence became more and more cruel and

frightening well i noticed several uh like pairing knives in the kitchen

missing and my first thought was beth

and i felt a little guilty about it at first i thought no but um

i really didn't even mention it to her they had been gone several weeks she was

sitting at the table drawing and mentioned to me what do those knives look like that are

gone mom and i said what knives fifth and

she said weren't they kind of silver and about this big and um

i knew then and then this little smile that's not not a sweet smile but a malicious

type of smile and i knew then i thought she's got them tell me about the knives where did you

get them from the drawer and where else

do you remember tell me about it

i got them from the dishwasher what kind of knives um

and what do you want to do with those knives kill john and mommy with them and daddy

beth frankly admits that she wishes to kill both her adoptive parents her acts of violence were increasingly

cruel and chilling to the point where she now had the weapons to accomplish the killing

and when mommy asks you about where the knives are what do you say

i don't know what they are what did you think she might do with the

knives my first thought was jonathan

and the reason we thought that was that she had by this time she had tried to kill john on several occasions and

openly admitted that in the basement she was hitting his head against a

cement floor i heard his screams and ran down and had to literally pull her hands off and she

looked wild-eyed did you get real mad at him did you hit his head real hard

tell me about it how many times did you do it a lot

what was the floor like clean up

and what happened to your brother tell me about it his head hurt real bad

but his chin he had to have stitches in it

could you stop use your words back

okay what was your brother doing when you were doing this

what what the toys okay was he asking you to stop when you when

you were doing it what was he saying

he said stop

and what did you do that didn't stop i just kept on

hurting them what were you thinking when you were doing that

thinking of killing them how did you stop

what made you stop when i heard peter walking across

the kitchen it made me stop because i thought mommy and daddy would come

okay did mommy come what did she do

she sent me to my mom okay

um and what if mom didn't stop you what

would you have done kept on doing it beth's outbursts of violence were

directed especially against jonathan who on one occasion had to be hospitalized after the girl repeatedly hit his head

on a concrete floor in an attempt to take his life if not for her parents this would

certainly have happened it was clear now that beth had a psychological problem

and what about after evaluating the extent of that psychological problems dr mcgidd felt that for the well-being of

the family beth needed to be temporarily separated from them

in april of 1989 her parents brought her to a special home of the expert at raising children

with early attachment disorders especially children who are dangerous to themselves and others i have children

that have killed numerous times cold-blooded family members neighbor

children kill them and they can do it makes my blood run

cold you think about nine years old people don't think a nine-year-old is capable of cold-blooded murder but they

are that attachment break does severe damage to the heart the ability to care and the ability to love

they don't care and they don't love they're capable of anything

we're very strict very strict about everything everything is completely monitored we take complete control because a child who's unattached

does not trust and because they don't trust they don't allow anybody to be boss of them

so we take complete control they are not boss of anything they have to ask to get a drink of water they have to ask to go

to the bathroom they have to ask to leave our site part of that is because we cannot trust them because of the

damage that they've done before worried about the situation her adoptive

parents tried to help her in different ways and took her to countless specialists the aggressions were incessant to the

point that it was impossible to continue a healthy life everything changed when they met the therapist ken maggot a clinical

psychologist specializing in abused children and victims of serious abuse so traumatized during the first years of

life that they do not establish emotional ties with other people the doctor worked with children who

could not accept love who had no conscience and who could hurt and even kill without remorse

the proposal was an intensive behavior modification therapy and part of the sessions with beth were recorded and

formed part of the documentary after assessing the extent of beth's psychological problems the specialist

decided that it was best to separate her from the rest of the family in april 1989 the girl was taken to a

specialized residence for children with attachment disorders that are danger to themselves and others

there beth lived with minors who had murdered in cold blood the therapy consisted of imposing

extreme restrictions beth had to ask permission for everything including drinking water and

going to the bathroom part of the goal was to rebuild beth's self-esteem so that she perceived

herself as a person of value beth would you like to say grace please

generally father thank you for this good day and everybody doing good

in jesus name amen believe that they're evil they believe

they're from the devil they believe that they are not a person of value and we have to change that and we have to build

that from a child who's nothing who's a bad kid in their own mind to a child who's valuable and loving and they see

themselves as that [Music]

you don't have to bite this when they do it you're well we can say

you did a good job you're a good worker and then it just builds that self-esteem little by little so that they change the

way that they see themselves

several months into treatment in this controlled environment beth had made progress and her therapist

decided to loosen some of the controls [Music]

that continued to show signs of improvement she began to develop a sense of right and wrong

she seemed to respond to affection it was more outgoing she went to public school

made friends at the local church and even sang in the choir

and you're going to go into sunday school again yeah get stickers

maybe you could put one on your nose [Music]

yeah it's a beard she's beard here's his nose [ __ ]

yeah see his beard is kind of flowing in the wind and everything

well that's that's where that's elisha that's the other prophet that took elijah's place

and he was left and there's elijah you know and he learned about sheep and the lord

is my shepherd march 3rd you just got that yesterday huh

[Music]

in the beginning we couldn't trust her with anything she was locked up at night we had alarms on the door at night so she wasn't sneaking around doing things

with the other children we don't worry about that anymore there's no alarm on her door at night now

she sleeps in the same room with my own daughter and i trust her that much she brushes the dogs and i trust her

that much because she has earned that trust she's learned it she's she has a heart and she

has a love inside and she feels bad when she does something now in the past because she didn't have a

conscience she didn't feel anything when she did something bad there was just no feeling there

and now she does feel bad and it shows in her face

i believe that beth can make it she's got a really bright mind she's got a good heart now

which has done a lot of healing she's got a really super set of parents they're powerful they're knowledgeable

they're motivated she's done a lot of good work with you in therapy with canal and with

myself she wants to heal and that's the number one key and she wants to heal because she has a

family that really cares about her and she wants to be with her

animal therapy also helped her empathize in the controlled environment beth was

showing signs of improvement was even beginning to develop a differentiation between good and bad

at home she also had to feed various farm animals and seemed to respond to affection

she laughed and interacted with other living beings and even hugged her therapist

gradually beth began to have more contact with other children was sent to school became friends at church and

began participating in a choir with less than a year of therapy beth's attitude changed radically

do you know where that anger came from that's when my birthday um

hurt me i had it all inside and i remembered it

and i started doing it and what did what did that do

when it was inside it made me

want to hurt people really bad

and who did you hurt my brother my mom and dad

and animals and animals where did it hurt the most

my brother me why don't you tell me that

it hurt it hurt me the most how did it hurt you the most

because when i hurt other people um it had only been a couple of months

since beth had admitted that her wish was to murder her brother and her parents but the change was resounding

the girl expressed regret for how she had treated her brother she no longer harmed herself and lamented for having

hurt people after passing through the residence beth began to feel empathy and regretted having herded our loved ones

i'm burning my dead itself

how you feel right now

it's kind of tough to talk about isn't it [Music]

beth gave her last interview from this film in december of 1989 although she had made progress

she would still need extensive therapy not all abused children are as deeply

scarred as beth but all abused children suffer a profound hurt for the rest of their

lives the road to recovery is long and hard for the abused child

there are more than one million new victims of child abuse in america every year [Music]

over the years we can see beth as a person with the capacity to empathize and to be aware of the consequences of

her actions obviously her apparent evil had its genesis in the continued abuse of which

she was a victim as a baby and her case serves to illustrate the dire consequences of physical and

psychological abuse at a young age currently beth leads a normal life and works as a nurse

her professional merits have earned her several awards this case leads us to the following

conclusions the importance of good parenting especially in critical periods of the child

but it also tells us about the effectiveness at least in this case of psychological therapy even in cases of

extreme gravity and that may seem irreconcilable this total psychological recovery of

small beth could be achieved by raising awareness to the child about their actions to mend their self-esteem and

build the habits and social behavior functional for example getting to accept certain standards and to manage channel

and understand the reason for their anger

you